The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made 1983

He has posted more classic K-Tel albums from the Seventies and Eighties to YouTube - complete with all the clicks and pops some of you may remember - than any other uploader but hidden in plain sight among those sentimental posts are Brandon Hixson's original K-Tel inspired compilations. Brandon has dubbed these albums, uploaded from CD-Rs unearthed from his personal archives, The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made and he was kind enough to send The K-Tel Kollection an advance notice, including hi-res cover art, of the latest wave a few weeks back. We'll be featuring these unique albums a few at a time, in somewhat chronological order, sharing the original YouTube links so you can show Brandon some support as well as exclusive Spotify recreations of each album just for fun.

YouTube     Spotify

We were thinking the same thing you probably were looking at the cover art above? Michael Jackson! On a K-Tel album? It has happened before here in the States:

• "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" appeared on Starflight, Hitline, and Wings Of Sound
• "Rock With You" also appears on Hitline and Wings of Sound
• "Human Nature" and "Say, Say, Say" were included on the charitable collection Let's Beat It, though "Beat It" was the more obvious choice
• "Beat It" is here on On The Charts '83.

We literally love every other song on the album (which Brandon originally posted as On The Charts back in 2015 before recently rebranding it) which is not to say the other 13 tracks after "Beat It" but six other tracks (every OTHER one?), including this trio of parenthetically-titled hits: "Major Tom (Coming Home)", "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" and "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)". 

YouTube     Spotify

Summer Beat '83 is made up of charted songs August 1983. With the 28 tracks equally split between Volume 1 and 2, among the tracks on Volume 1 that live up to their billing as The Hottest Hits of the Year - at least in our book - are "Come Dancing", "She's A Beauty", "The Salt In My Tears", "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" and "Promises, Promises". 

YouTube    Spotify

The final week of August 1983 was our first week as a high school senior so a few of these songs here on Volume 2 of Summer Beat '83 have very specific memories attached to them, making this album our favorite of the two. The inclusion of a lesser known but still a favorite Madness track earns bonus points as does using "Holiday Road" as the closing track. We took the liberty of making our own single volume Summer Beat '83 playlist with our favorites from both volumes and a few from On The Charts '83 as well. Two tracks from On The Charts '83 also appear on the second volume of Summer Beat '83 or is it the other way around?

The final chapter in The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made will cover All The Other Ones we haven't featured yet.

Check out Brandon's earlier Albums K-Tel Never Made HERE and HERE.

To see another really good K-Tel album that should have been, go HERE.